User talk:Laodah


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Please contact me
Hello! I am working on a news feature story about the use of "consists of" in articles. I noticed in comments on GiraffeData's talk page you seem to be an admirer of his work. Could you please reach out to me at your earliest convenience at Keltym@CBSNews.com Thank you! NOLANY (talk) 22:16, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

"based around" is approved by leading editors, publishers, and authors in over 10,000 scholarly books
I look into a variety of style guides and several did indeed recommend against "Based around." However most of them dealing with "around" do not register a complaint about "based around." I believe "Based around" is standard usage for many of the best publishers, including Oxford University press, Cambridge University press, Harvard University press, Yale, Chicago, Illinois and so on. As well as Norton, Cengage and commercial & textbook publishers. Google books shows over 9000 different scholarly books published by Oxford and Cambridge University presses that use "Based around." The authors, editors, proofreaders of the most prestigious and respected publishers are the ones who set the standards. Here is one   book that's mildly negative (it should be avoided he says), though I think it does not support aggressive editing of work by Wiki editors. Rjensen (talk) 11:28, 10 May 2015 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, 10,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to how many books there are. My own search of Google Books shows 200 times as many books published by Oxford University Press use the phrase "based on".  More than 10,000 people think it's OK to murder someone.  And you found no style guide that recommends "based around" instead of "based on" or anything else.  Finally, even assuming there is no authority that supports aggressive editing of work by Wikipedia editors, there isn't any that opposes it either.  The only significant cost of Wikipedia editing of trivial grammar is the editor's time, and there are a lot of personal factors that go into a person's evaluation of what is worth his time.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 17:22, 10 May 2015 (UTC)


 * "drop in the bucket compared to how many books there are" is a canard. You have no idea how many books would have had a need for a semantically equivalent phrase. Jeh (talk) 03:54, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I guess you mistook my point. I'm not saying the fact that it's a drop in the bucket shows that "based on" is better.  I'm saying it shows that the 10,000 number does not show "based around" is better or even equally accepted.  Without knowing how many books might have used one or the other and chose "based around", the fact that 10,000 chose "based around" tells us nothing.  Is 10,000 a big number?  Not really.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 15:33, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't believe what I do on Wikipedia is "aggressive", and in fact I don't even characterise it as correcting. I replace a non sequitur with better semantics. An expression doesn't have to be "wrong" per se to be subject to editing; just inferior to other choices. And whether or not "based around" or other illogical uses of "around" are eventually received as grammatical, they will always be bad style, because unclear. Laodah 18:41, 10 May 2015 (UTC)


 * You are replacing wording with better semantics in your opinion. You mentioned in your many many edit summaries on this point that use of "around" is disputed. You have cited no evidence of that. On the other hand, there most certainly is a WP guideline against disruptive editing, and my opinion is that your edits are disruptive. Your refusal here to consider alternate views on the matter indicates an unwillingness to edit collaboratively. Since your edits of this nature have been objected it certainly is expected that you will not continue without achieving consensus in support. Jeh (talk) 03:54, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Whose opinion would you expect him to use? Except for a small number of things covered by the Wikipedia Manual of Style, we all have to use our own opinion of the best wording for a Wikipedia article.  Some people are of the opinion that "based around" is good phrasing, and you seem to be giving that opinion priority.  Having a few people object is not a consensus against, especially if those objecting are the ones whose words were edited - people tend to be touchy about that.  If there's no consensus that changing "based around" hurts Wikipedia, doing it is not disruptive.  I also don't see a refusal to consider alternate views; I just see a failure to be persuaded.  And that's reasonable -- the arguments here in favor of keeping "based around" aren't exactly overwhelming - they don't come close to convincing me, for example.
 * As for citations to prove that "disputed" in the edit summary is correct, I don't see how that's needed. This very talk page section starts off with a statement by another editor that he found that several style manuals recommend against it, but enough people do it that it's obvious that a lot of writers think it's fine.  Coupled with the arguing on this talk page, I'm comfortable saying there is a dispute.  And it's just a few words of summary -- there's a whole essay explaining how Laodah concludes a Wikipedia article is better off without "based around", and it's not just because it's disputed.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 15:33, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Worse yet, Jeh reverted an edit I made that was perfectly and undisputedly correct. That, Wikipedia does forbid. Our benchmark on WP is correct usage. If a gnome edit is correct, it may not be reverted, whether or not you had no objection to the old version. There's no defending the "honour" of words here. Laodah 18:43, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Giraffedata: I didn't originate the words in question, so the note about "those objecting are the ones whose words were edited" is off point.
 * Laodah: Your edit made the sentence less informative. I'll discuss this with you on the article talk page if you like. I think you should be more familiar with the subject matter of the articles you're editing before blindly declaring that "based around" (or "designed around" in this case) isn't correct wording and that imprecise terms like "use" can be substituted in with no problem. Jeh (talk) 18:57, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Indigo children
Why place this on the talk page? Take it up with the reverter, or at least wp:ping them? Also, your signature appears to not be leaving a link to your user talk page. This does make it more difficult to leave you a message. Jim1138 05:20, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

The issue is of interest to everyone involved with the page, hence my post on Talk. (It's also of interest to the entire WP community, given the illogical nature of the reversion.) Laodah 18:28, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

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India/IVC
Sorry to have reverted your edit at India's lead. Apologies also for the mangled edit summary. (I have just woken up.) Civilizations are essentially urban. In the instance of Indus, there were various cultures around the urban settlements in both space and time which might be included in a more encompassing "Indus Valley tradition," but an attempt at starting that page was thought to be a content fork and was redirected to IVC. If IVC had been a pastoral culture (as the later Indo-Aryan culture of North India was, or neolithic as Mehrgarh of ca. 7000 BCE in Western Pakistan was) we would not be able to call it a "civilization." In other words, as I understand it, the cities are the sine qua nons of a civilization. When we say "Supporting," we make them sound like a beneficial outcome. Best, Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  10:39, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

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Minor edits
A minor edit in Wikipedia has a specific meaning and you would appear to routinely mark edits so which do not conform. Many of these seem to revolve around what you believe to be a dispute and that in itself is an indication that it's not minor: A minor edit is one that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. All the best. Mutt Lunker (talk) 21:00, 21 February 2022 (UTC)


 * The policy you quote pertains to facts, not copyediting. An edit that merely upgrades grammar or other points of usage is minor by definition. I use the term "disputed usage" in my edit summaries to avoid pointing out that this usage of "around" (usually the matter in question) is unencyclopedic, which enrages some Wikipedians for reasons I little understand. So yes, the definition of "around" is apparently "disputed" by a minority of English speakers, but has no bearing on the content of the article. That makes upgrading it to more-accepted usage minor, and not something that content editors -- the heart of our service -- need waste their time on.


 * Note that in those incidents where I do edit content, or fear I might have done because the vague diction replaced makes it difficult to ascertain just what the writer intended to say, my custom is not to check "minor edit".


 * By the way, you're the first colleague to bring up this objection. In the ten-odd years I've been grammar-gnoming on the WP, the usual complaint has been that the usage in question is "not disputed" (so said as we dispute it).


 * Either way, it's minor.


 * Thanks for bringing this up. Laodah 22:35, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
 * You did more than address the supposedly problematic use of "around", I wasn't even addressing that (though personally I thought the wording was clear). Where does the policy say "that it pertains to facts, not copyediting"? That aside, my very point was that you made other alterations which made the sentence say something different; you altered the facts. Whether it was correct or pertinent or not, that is not a minor edit. If in doubt, don't mark it so please. Mutt Lunker (talk) 23:36, 21 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. If I altered facts in an article and clicked "minor edit", I apologise. I either didn't realise the facts had changed (poor grammar can obfuscate meaning, making it easy to miss what was intended), or if it was a content matter I may have clicked the box out of habit.


 * As I said above, when I suspect an edit may have weakened accuracy, my practice is not to click "minor edit", and in fact to request a review of the passage by more knowledgeable editors in my summary. Laodah 23:50, 21 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Laodah 23:50, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Why, despite the exchange above, are you still doing this? You continue to mark as minor edits which actively change the meaning of what is said, in most cases there appears to be little or nothing wrong with the existing phrasing and your new version is often a rather inelegant phrasing. Your claim that this is the resolution of a dispute makes it seem like it has been adopted as a policy decision so, if so, indicate the finding. If you mean that you, personally, dispute the usage, that, by definition and as you have been told above, seals the fact that the edit is not minor. Mutt Lunker (talk) 16:47, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

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